Harry Potter and the Dark Lord of the Sith

Chapter 22.

Harry and Luke stood on their hands, maintaining balance. While it was very difficult to raise oneself into this position, Harry needed almost no effort to maintain it--just concentration. Yoda stood on Luke's feet. They raised their hands and put fingertips in contact. Both of them focused on a nearby rock and tried to lift it.

"Master Yoda, why do I need this?" Harry asked. "I can already lift objects with the hovering charm."

Yoda jumped from Luke's feet onto Harry's, and Harry barely managed to keep his balance. "Suppose someone away takes your wand. What then will you do, hmm? A Jedi relies not on implements."

Artoo rolled up and chirped. Harry saw Luke collapse, and then lost his own control. Yoda jumped off and scowled at his students.

"Oh, Artoo, what is it?" Luke asked in frustration.

The droid beeped and led them through the swamp. There, Harry saw a tip of a nose of an X-wing sinking beneath the murky water.

"Oh, no," Luke said. "We'll never get it out now."

"So certain are you?" Yoda demanded. "Always with you it cannot be done. Hear you nothing that I say?"

Harry raised his eyebrows. Yoda wanted Luke to lift the fighter out with the Force?

"Master," Luke tried to defend himself, "moving stones around is one thing. This is totally different."

"No!" Yoda retorted. "No different! Only different in your mind! You must unlearn what you have learned."

"All right," Luke agreed. "I'll give it a try."

Again, Yoda was unhappy. "No. Try not. Do. Or do not. There is no try."

Harry didn't see how lifting a whole starfighter would be possible. Even with the hovering charm he didn't think--he, forget it, even Professor Dumbledore couldn't have done it. Luke stepped forward and raised his arm.

Water began to bubble and a small piece of the fighter began to appear above the water. Then it sank back. Luke was covered in sweat, out of breath. Harry decided to make his own attempt. He had no idea whether his own fighter was functional, and they needed at least one working ship. This was too important. He got out his wand.

"Wingardium Leviosa!" he said.

Once again, the fighter began to rise. Harry was putting more and more energy into the spell until... he collapsed, exhausted, just like Luke. The ship sank back into the swamp.

"It's just too big," he whispered.

"Size matters not," Yoda replied. "Judge me by my size, do you?" Harry and Luke both shook their heads.

"And well you should not. For my ally is the Force. And a powerful ally it is. Life creates it... makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us... and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter." He shook Luke's arm. "When an ally of yours it is, implements need you will not." He looked at Harry. "Known this, you should have. Power not in the wand lies, nor in the words of the spell control. In the Force both are. Find them in the Force you must. Feel it you must around you. Here, between you... me... the tree... the rock... everywhere! Yes, even between the land and that ship!"

"You want the impossible," Luke complained.

Instead of replying, Yoda raised his clawed hand... and the X-wing rose out of the swamp, righted itself, and flew, without power, towards them. It gently landed on sold ground nearby. Yoda did not appear tired at all.

"I don't..." Luke gasped, "I don't believe it." Harry couldn't find anything to say.

"That," Yoda emphasized, "is why you fail."

Harry walked off, thinking about what he'd missed, and whether there was some way that he or Luke could have lifted the ship out.

XXXXXXXX

Hermione looked up and saw another X-wing falling, although it appeared to have some control. She looked down and yelped. The ground was approaching incredibly fast. "Don't panic," she told herself. She knew there was still a chance to survive. One system on the fighter had no electronic components and would work now. Ejection.

She pulled the lever about two hundred feet above the planet's surface. The cockpit top separated and flew off, and her seat blasted out of the fighter. Pain shot through her at the sudden acceleration with no compensation. She drew her wand and got ready. Righting her seat, she fired its jets to slow down her fall. It worked, but the engines burned through their fuel before she reached the ground. Falling from thirty feet, she put all her energy into the spell. "Reducto!" she shouted, hoping the banishing charm would cushion her fall.

She didn't know whether the spell worked or if she just got lucky. The seat crashed onto concrete, and despite the pain, she quickly released her straps and stood up. Every move hurt, but nothing seemed to be broken. She was close to the edge of the forest, but that wouldn't help. In the distance, she saw stormtroopers running towards her. She knew she would have trouble outrunning them even under the best of conditions.

The other downed X-wing crash-landed nearby. Its laser cannons pointed at the stormtroopers and opened fire. The Imperials scattered. The cockpit of the fighter blew open and Wedge leaped out. He ran up to her.

"Hermione? Are you okay?"

"As okay as possible," she answered laconically.

"There!" Wedge pointed to a nearby building and ran there. Hermione, dazed, followed.

Behind them, Wedge's fighter exploded. "I've set it to self-destruct," he explained.

A stormtrooper stood up when they ran in. "Hey, what're--" he started but Wedge shot him. Hermione's heart leaped. There were speeder bikes in this building.

"Can you handle these?" Wedge asked.

"Yes."

"Then let's go."

"One moment," Hermione said, drawing her wand. She picked a bike, then aimed at the rest. "Reducto!" The speeder bikes flew into the hangar wall, some breaking into pieces.

"Good thinking. Follow me!" Wedge and Hermione rushed past the stormtroopers that just approached the hangar and flew into the forest.

Hermione even forgot about her pain, since maneuvering between trees took all her concentration. "Wedge? Where're we going?" She called out.

"Away from here," he replied. "Watch out!"

A blaster bolt flew by from behind. She glanced. Four stormtroopers on speeder bikes were after them.

Before she could say anything, Wedge gutted his engines and she rushed past him. She had no time to be shocked, however. The enemy kept shooting at her, and even scored a hit--fortunately, not getting anything vital. She went back to the piloting. Wedge seems to know what he's doing. Unlike me.

She looked back sand saw only one stormtrooper. "Stupefy!" she shouted, and knocked him out. The bike, without control, crashed into a tree and exploded.

Hermione felt relieved, but then a blaster bolt nearly hit her from the left. She saw another speeder descending towards her. She looked to the right and saw the same thing. The stormtroopers both held small pistols and shot at her from both sides, all the while coming closer. They're trying to box me in, she realized.

Then the speeder bike on her right blew apart and was replaced with another, with Wedge atop it. "Hermione!" he yelled, firing his blaster at the remaining stormtrooper. "Jump!" He motioned her to get behind him. She felt her bike rock, and herself hit by something on the back. The stormtrooper leaped onto her bike. She pushed off, and grabbed the back of Wedge's speeder.

And couldn't make it all the way. The stormtrooper was tightly holding her legs, while she held on to Wedge's bike. Ground below her raced at at least a hundred miles per hour. The Imperial tried to pull away, and she didn't think she could hold on.

"Wedge!" she screamed. The pilot saw it and reached out. She took a risk and let

go with one hand to take Wedge's.

Then her other hand slipped. Hermione yelled out in terror, but Wedge already tightened his grip. Hermione became the rope in a tug-of-war between him and the stormtrooper. She actually smiled at that thought. Here, the rope is extremely biased.

She kicked at the stormtrooper, at the same time pulling up on Wedge. Not expecting this, the Imperial let go. Wedge yanked her up, tightly wrapped his arms around her, and tumbled off the speeder, just before it impacted on an enormous tree trunk and turned into flames. A second later, another explosion signaled that the stormtrooper met the same fate.

"Come on," Wedge pulled Hermione up. "We're not clear yet."

She followed, leaning on him. They descended to the bank of a river. "Can you swim?" he asked. She nodded, then remembered something.

"One moment. Wedge, your blaster." He handed it over with a puzzled look. She drew he wand. "Impervius!" she said. "It will not be damaged by the water."

"Thanks." Wedge stepped into the river. Hermione joined him. Swimming in a flight suit, and especially in boots, was difficult. When, at least two miles downstream, they came to the other side, Hermione was about to collapse. Still, she somehow managed to make it to a huge tree, under which Wedge chose to stop. She lay down.

"Wedge," she had to struggle to say the words, "thank you. I don't know how many times you saved my life today. And that last time... If it was just a bit later, you would have died. You could have let go..."

Wedge leaned over her, looking into her eyes. "No. No, I couldn't have."

"Wedge..." Hermione started, but then sleep overtook her.